The renewed historian Franco Cardini talks of L’esploratore del Duce – translated into English as Mussolini’s Explorer, as ”two terrific, monumental volumes by Enrica Garzilli”. It describes L’esploratore del Duce in a very enthusiastic way. This is a videoclip of RAI 3, TV program “Il tempo e la Storia – L’Oriente in Italia: Tucci e Maraini” – of May 4, 2016.

As you might know, the book L’esploratore Del Duce talks about Giuseppe Tucci (1894-1984), one the main explorers, scholars, Tibetologist, Buddhologist and Indologist of last century, and protagonist of the intellectual and political history of Italy and Asia during Fascism and in the first 40 years of the Republic.

The book reconstructs 20 years of Italian policy in the South and East Asia, which has been neglected so far: Tucci was the right-hand man of Mussolini in India, Nepal, and before the Anticomintern Pact, and after World War 2 in Japan, too. He also played a role under Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, after the war.

It also reconstructs the intellectual history and diplomatic relations of Italy and Asia through the relationships Tucci with Benito Mussolini, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, Giovanni Gentile, Pandit Nehru, Hem Raj Sharma of Nepal, and the other main protagonists of the history of Asia and Europe.

Great book dedicated to one of the most important.. (by Umberto Mondini)
Great book dedicated to one of the most important, fascinating and mysterious men of Italian culture: Giuseppe Tucci. I agree with Paul Arpaia, Professor of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania when he writes” Few scholars today have Garzilli’s enormous breadth to weave together Tucci s contributions in history, linguistics, archeology, philosophy and anthropology under Fascist Italy and the Italian Republic”.

In a word: splendid!(by Krishnadt)
When the mailman delivered to me this first volume of the monumental Garzilli’s 9 vols. work on the great Italian orientalist Giuseppe Tucci, I remember I was eager to read it as soon as possible. But, alas!, several work commitments kept me far from my intentions… since last week!
I’ve therefore taken my time to go with the due attention through all its pages: introduction, photographic material, the two main chapters (one dealing with Tucci’s youth and the other with his expeditions in Asia and the figure of Carlo Formichi) and even the bibliography.
Well… I’ve literally devoured it!!
As an enthusiast of Oriental studies and as an Italian, I’ve since ever been interested in Tucci’s life and works. Yet, if his books and articles still are at our disposal, for obvious reasons his file is not, and only one who knew him and his friends, acquaintances and colleagues in person, one like Enrica Garzilli, can better tell us the many facets of Tucci’s character: not only the international scholar, but also the Italian professor, the adventurer, the husband, the play-boy… in a word, that incredible man he was, loved by some, loathed by others.
The true spirit of Garzilli’s book, I must say, lies in the fact that it’s not a mere collection of episodes of Tucci’s life or a, so to speak, simple research concerned with what Tucci did, where he went, whom he met with. Not at all! This book, on the contrary, is an actual landscape. Garzilli, page after page, while thoroughly expounding the results of her delving into documents and direct witnesses, accompanies us into Tucci’s world.

On the Holocaust Memorial Day, dedicated to the Shoah, I would like to clarify the position of Tucci on racism and anti-Semitism. The issue has sparked much controversy in the Roman Jewish community, in Italian media and at parliamentary level, when on May 25, 2010, a widening in Rome was named Largo Giuseppe Tucci in his honor.

The Manifesto of Racist Scientists or Manifesto of Race was published in Il Giornale d’Italia (Newspaper of Italy) on July 15, 1938. Later on were given the names of ten scientists who had “prepared or supported” the document. One of them, professor Nicola Pende, director of the Institute of Special Medical Pathology at the University of Rome, a few months later denied having given his support.

On the Internet and was picked up by some journalists a list of public figures – all men – that would be deployed publicly in favor of the “Manifesto of Race”. Among them politicians, distinguished intellectuals, cartoonists, physiscians, journalists, and Giuseppe Tucci.

The Declaration of Race was approved by the Grand Council of Fascism on October 6, 1938 and a few days after it was published in the Paper of the National Fascist Party (PNF). King Vittorio Emanuele III, under Mussolini proposal, along with the ministers of Foreign Affairs, of Justice, of Finance, and of Corporations, on November 17, 1938 approved a which established the Measures for the Defense of the Italian Race.

Racial discrimination occurred in both public and private sectors and in the education of children born to Jewish relatives: evil should be extinghuished from the start. Finally, the Royal Law of November, 15 1938- XVII integrated and coordinated in a single text the rules for the defense of race in Italian schools. They were hard rules, which, among other things, separated Jewish children in special sections of the school “in places where the number was not less than ten children”, and forbade Jewish adults to obtain the license to teach at university and to become members “of academies, institutes and associations of science, literature and arts. In 1939 Il Duce also established that Jews could not be teachers, notary public, and journalist, and were established special sets of rules for the other professions.